Blowing Smoke with Boxing's Big Voice

Announcer David Diamante, the new voice of the New Jersey (soon Brooklyn) Nets, has been calling boxing matches for years. On the side, he owns a cigar lounge in the heart of Brooklyn. We talk with Diamante about his new gig and the fine art of cigars

I’m idling outside Diamante’s, a cigar lounge in Fort Greene, waiting for David Diamante, and soon I smell him coming. It’s late January but warm. A motorcycle growls down the Brooklyn side street, brakes, and a rush of tobacco musk hits my nose. The rider backs his bike, a Suzuki GS 1200, into a tiny sliver of a parking spot. "Hey," he says, propping up his helmet, exposing a waist-length mane of dreadlocks. "Sorry I’m late." Diamante, whose family goes back five generations in Brooklyn, is a celebrity around these parts—he waves or nods to literally every passerby as we walk to grab a coffee—and his reach is ever-expanding. A forty-year-old former gentleman’s club DJ and motorcycle enthusiast (his other ride’s a Ducati), Diamante has been ring-announcing boxing matches for years on ESPN and HBO, blessed with Ted Williams-like pipes.

This year marks the first season of his newest gig: voice of the New Jersey (for now!) Nets, whose future home in Brooklyn is crawling distance from Diamante’s, which we enter, select two medium-bodied, hand-rolled torpedo sticks, and sit for a fireside chat. According to Diamante, a guy should smoke a cigar for one of three reasons—"for good conversation, contemplation, or celebration." And so we choose Door No. 1.

GQ: Let’s talk about cigars. How did you get into the habit?

David Diamante: I’ve always enjoyed smoking. The spirits liked smoke. It’s a spiritual thing. I smoked cigars even when I was young, though I wasn’t an aficionado or anything. I started taking it pretty seriously after traveling to Cuba, which was a while ago. Probably ten years ago. I just started doing a lot of travel for cigars, to the different countries, like Dominican Republic, Honduras, Nicaragua.

GQ: These were cigar trips?

David Diamante: No. Well, depends. I always try to have fun on my trips, but I also make sure to do some business. There was a certain point when I knew I was going to do this. I wanted to own my own spot and Brooklyn didn’t have a cigar lounge.

GQ: Where do you have your cigars rolled?

David Diamante: Dominican Republic. There’s a Cuban guy I’ve known for a lot of years and he has a factory down there. There are different tobaccos and different blends. I’ve worked with this guy for a long time, working on the blends, coming up with the cigars that I liked, the cigars for the Diamante’s label.

GQ: Tell me a bit about what kind of work you’ve put into the lounge.

David Diamante: This place was actually a tax office. It was in bad shape. So me and a guy named Larry, a carpenter, we built this whole place with reclaimed wood. We laid the floors, every piece cut to size. We notched the grooves there. We built the bar out of old doors, banisters. We built this mantel. Built the bench in the front. Built the membership lockers in the back. And I put in the stripper pole, an ode to my old days in the clubs.

GQ: Maybe it’s just me, but there seems to be an inherent connection between boxing and cigars.

David Diamante: I’m a big fan of boxing. I’m also a big fan of old movies, and when you’re watching the old movies they’re always smoking a cigar or a pipe. And when you see pictures of the old fights, all the guys are in a shirt and tie, smoking a cigar or a pipe. I was into boxing from jump. I started training myself, did a little fighting, then got into the announcing side. It does marry very well, but it wasn’t by design, per se. Just two things I’m really passionate about.

GQ: Are there any particular old movies that stand out for you?

David Diamante: One of my favorites is The Man with the Golden Arm. Frankie Machine. Frank Sinatra. He was a drummer and a junkie, comes back to redeem himself, gets out of jail. That’s a great movie. There are so many, though. I’m a big fan of Sterling Hayden, Montgomery Clift, Brando and Bogart, Eddie G. Robinson, any John Huston film, Billy Wilder’s films, Alfred Hitchcock’s films, [Otto] Preminger, Sam Peckinpah—although he’s a little bit later. I’m just a huge movie buff. Even a movie like From Here to Eternity just has it all—the love story, the fighting, the war scenes.

GQ: How about current cinema?

David Diamante: Not as much. There’s a lot coming out so it’s hard to keep up. But it’s not just that. A lot of stuff doesn’t impress me, and I’m not into wasting my time. Just to see big explosions on the screen doesn’t do it for me.

GQ: What’s interesting about announcers and the announcing world is that it seems there’s real room for personality to develop and to ert its own force on a sport, and you clearly stand out for a lot of reasons.

David Diamante: The person you see in the role of announcer, typically, is an older person. Boxing especially—it’s an old guard thing, but I’m trying to change that as an announcer, trying to bring a younger demographic into the sport. Boxing is something I really believe in and want to live on. It’s going to live on and I want to be part of bringing it to a younger generation, especially in this age of MMA, which I’m also a fan of. I’m really super passionate about sports, and I think my passion comes through over the microphone, and that goes for boxing and also the NBA. It’s like DJing. To be a good DJ, you’re only as good as your crowd and you need to look at your crowd and see who they are and get them into it. If you’re pumping super hardcore music to a club with four people in it, you just kill the vibe. You gotta build a little. More people come in, they’re having a little fun, and then there’s a moment—a moment when it switches and you’re like, now it’s a party. And you have to know that moment. It’s not a tangible thing, but it really, really is.

GQ: Do you have a name for that moment?

David Diamante: I don’t. But, man, it’s magic. It’s a magic moment in the club. Up the pace and the BPMs and now it’s a journey. You want to take those people on a journey with you. And at the same time, it’s like you’re juggling, ten balls are in the air, and if you play the wrong song you’ve just dropped the ball. You play the wrong song and the party’s gone. You kill it. And same with sports. If I’m watching a game, calling a game, and like MarShon Brooks makes a breakaway and hits that shot, I’m like, MARSHOOOOON BROOKS!, and I hit it real hard. People love it, man. They get into it and the crowd just roars.

GQ: I’m thinking of the old three-point call for John Starks in the Garden. It still gets me pumped up.

David Diamante: That was Mike Walczewski. And before him it was John Condon, who was also a big boxing guy. So I think there are correlations between NBA and boxing. There can be, as there are going to be here in Brooklyn at the Barclays Center.

GQ: The boxing world is known, at the upper level, to be run by a pretty small group of people. So who are the power players nowadays?

David Diamante: I think it’s like that in a lot industries, not just boxing. But the guys, the players, are the top promoters, the network ecutives, and the heads of the sanctioning bodies. As far as up-and-coming bors, you have Saul Alvarez. He’s this young Mexican fighter who’s really popular right now. A bunch of guys from Brooklyn that I think are great. Danny Jacobs is coming back. Sergio Martinez is a big draw. He’s Argentinean.

GQ: Do you have any thoughts on the potential Mayweather-Pacquiao bout?

David Diamante: Do I think it’ll happen? May 5, no. I do hope for the boxing world it happens, but it’s really not looking good.

GQ: Why not?

David Diamante: At the end of the day, if it doesn’t happen, it’s usually because of money. Because if it makes dollars, it makes sense. Of course it’s going to make a lot of money but any fight that Pacquiao or Mayweather does is going to make money regardless, so obviously someone, somewhere, in whoever’s camp, doesn’t want this fight to happen. At the end of the day, it’s got to be money.

GQ: What fight would you most want to call, be it featuring current or past fighters?

David Diamante: Thing is, as an announcer, I love the sport of boxing and when I announce a small fight or a big fight I come at it the same way. I act like it’s in front of millions of people on worldwide TV. I treat it the same. As long as it’s a good, competitive fight, I’m stoked. But if you’re talking about in history, there’s the "Fight of the Century," the Sugar Ray Robinson-Jake LaMotta fights. Although I don’t so much want to go back to call those fights as I do to see them.

GQ: Do you ever think about the possibility of being a part of one of those fights, one that gets stamped in bronze, goes down in history, and lives on TV forever?

David Diamante: Last year I was involved with two of them. The WBC Welterweight Championship, on April 16 at MGM Grand at Foxwoods. It was Andre Berto against Victor Ortiz, and both guys went down in the fight. It was one of the fights of the year. I was also lucky enough to call Sports Illustrated’s "Fight of the Year," which was on ESPN’s Friday Night Fights. It was Pawel Wolak and Delvin Rodriguez, and that was a war, came down to a draw. I’ve already seen it a few times on TV.

GQ: Can you sense it while it’s happening?

David Diamante: Yeah, sometimes you realize you’re watching something that’s special. It definitely happens. But you never really know till the end.

GQ: So what can you tell us about the Nets?

David Diamante: I love them, man. We’re a young team. Definitely need some help in the frontcourt. But we’ve got Deron Williams, maybe the best point guard in the NBA. Kris Humphries is a great player. Say what you want about him, but he fights hard every game. MarShon Brooks is one of the best rookies in the league right now. Brook Lopez is going to be back soon. We’re getting our shots; we’re just not sinking them all the time. Live by the three, die by the three.

GQ: Are you looking forward to the move to Brooklyn?

David Diamante: It’s going to be historic. It’s going to change everything. And my commute will be wonderful. I’ll walk right over with a stogie in my hand. Everybody knows Brooklyn. It’s the borough that started it all in the city where it all started, and we haven’t had a team since the Dodgers. It’s overdue.

GQ: Have you had a chance to meet your boss, Mikhail Prokhorov?

David Diamante: I haven’t. He’s busy right now. But I look forward to meeting the boss.

GQ: He’s into kickboxing, right? Would you ever call one of his fights?

David Diamante: If he would like that, I’d be happy to call it. I’d have to learn a little bit of Russian but I can do that.

GQ: How about Jay-Z?

David Diamante: I’ve met Jay-Z. I’m a big fan, like we all are. Jay-Z is great, and he’s Brooklyn. I think it’s going to be exciting, man. We’ve got a lot of young, cutting-edge type people, and I think I fit that scheme. Jay-Z is going to be opening Barclays with a bunch of concerts, and it’s going to be bananas.

GQ: You haven’t cut your hair since ’88, correct? You ever catch flack for being a white dude with dreads?

David Diamante: I’m not really a dude to catch flack, because I’ll give flack back. Treat me well, I’ll treat you better. Treat me bad, I’ll treat you worse. Has that ever happened? Yes, of course. But to me it’s not really about how you wear your hair, it’s what’s inside your head. I never meant it to be a trademark, though it now is. It’s my style. The day it doesn’t feel right is the day I’ll cut it. Does it affect me? No. I know who I am. I fought my battles. I can look in the mirror and I sleep like a F-ing baby at night. I sleep well.

GQ: You lived on the West Coast for a long time, and you’ve been all over the globe. Any new adventures planned?

David Diamante: I want to take an around-the-world trip on my motorcycle. Whenever I’m in a foreign country I’ll try to rent a motorcycle or acquire one somehow, and I ride. It’s the best way to see the lay of the land, to get to places that are untouchable to the tourist on a bus. I’d love to do a show, like a travel show. It could be about the boxing scene in different areas, or music. It could be about whatever. Motorcycling to me is two-wheeled therapy. I can’t imagine living without my bikes.

GQ: Your sartorial reputation has been growing of late. When did you start going the custom suit route?

David Diamante: That was pretty recent. There’s a guy named Warren Liao and he runs a company called Black Lapel. He approached me. I feel it’s really important to dress like that. Detail is everything, and it’s a big deal, especially if you’re going to carry the torch for a big organization.

GQ: You know you’re not the only New York announcer known for his style choices.

David Diamante: Clyde Frazier? Yeah, of course. The first game I did was a Knicks game, and I saw Clyde in the press room and he said hello. I try to be a little more... I don’t want to say conservative. My suits, they’re...they’re not like Clyde Frazier, God bless him. We all love his style. He’s got the best style.

GQ:So, asking as a relative novice, what should a guy be looking for when he goes to buy a cigar?

David Diamante: It depends what he likes. Something mild? Something strong? What shape does he like? Some guys like a thin gauge, some like a fatter gauge. Some of my favorites? I love the Padron anniversary series. I like Tatuaje a lot, Don Pepin cigars. That’s non-Cuban. If we’re talking Cuban, I love Trinidad, Diplomaticos, Por Larra&#xF1;agas. There are so many good cigars out there. But there are also a lot of bad cigars. A lot of guys don’t understand how to choose a good cigar, which is kind of a shame. It’s such a great pleasure. It’s a gift you give yourself.

GQ: What are some key elements to look for?

David Diamante: See if it’s stored properly. Check out the construction of the cigar—it can’t tell you everything but it can tell you a lot. The wrapper, the leaf they use on the outside, typically the leaf has veins in it, and it shouldn’t have big veins. It should be kind of smooth. You can feel it. If it’s dry and crackling or if it’s spongy, that’s also an issue.

GQ: One complaint that people have is that, after smoking a cigar, they smell like cigars. Do you have any strategies to combat that? Wear only certain clothes when smoking?

David Diamante: It’s part of the allure, man. I’ve never had an issue with women, and I smell like cigars a lot of the time. Never had a complaint. Look, you gotta stay clean and have your clothes laundered. A lot of guys that do worry about it, they can hang their jackets outside or bag their jackets up.

GQ: What’s up with the Native American statue you see in cigar stores?

David Diamante: The Indian is a symbol of tobacco, similar to the barber pole outside the barbershop. They say that Native Americans introduced tobacco to the Spaniards, and it’s kind of to pay homage to them.

GQ: Is there a right way to light a cigar? No matches, I’ve heard.

David Diamante: No. A lot of guys are anti-butane. A lot of guys like to light with wooden matches, or off Spanish cedars. We have Spanish cedar sticks here. Some guys like torches. First you want to toast the foot of a cigar. You want to prime it, don’t want to be too harsh with a cigar. Cigars are very delicate, and they will fall apart if you don’t treat them well. Then, just make sure it’s evenly lit. Everyone’s different with how they like cigars, even with how you cut it. Some guys bite it, some guys punch it, some guys V-cut it, some straight cut. Supposedly Winston Churchill always poked a hole at the end with a long wooden match. I’ve punched mine with keys, popped it with a toothpick, or bit it off. I’ve been smoking a long time. The way that you like it is the best way to do it.

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